Our Scripture reading this morning is from the book of Romans. We'll begin reading in chapter 12, reading the first three verses, and then skipping down to chapter 13, verses 8 through 14 of that chapter. So beginning our reading, Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 12 at verse 1, let us hear God's own Word. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. And then skipping down to chapter 13 at verse 8, "'Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone, the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to satisfy, to gratify its desires. So far the reading of God's Word. Well, we're entering a new year. In some ways, it's entirely arbitrary, isn't it? We're really just entering a new day. Days come. But it's not a bad thing to pause and reflect a little bit on the passage of time, on what we expect, what we might look forward to in the coming year. And there are a lot of uncertainties, aren't there? I remember an old will that I saw that had been written in the nineteenth century that began with the words, knowing the uncertainties of life and the certainty of death. I write this will. Well, there are a lot of uncertainties in life, aren't there? What's going to happen with COVID? No one seems to know for sure. What's going to happen with the economy? No one seems to know for sure. What's going to happen with politics? The only thing we know for sure is that there'll be too much television coverage of politics. What's going to happen in this coming year? We don't really know. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times had two full pages devoted to what is being reported by various astrologers and tarot card readers about the year 2022. Two whole pages. Apparently, they had pages to fill. It may also explain why so few people read newspapers anymore, just old people. And the conclusion was, overall, the astrologers and tarot card readers said, 2022 is a year to move carefully and thoughtfully. You may want to write that down. The Apostle Paul already said that in Ephesians chapter 5, and you didn't even need to subscribe. But what is certain about the coming year? What is certain about the coming year? What is certain about the coming year is that we are called to live as Christians, and we are called to live out of Christian certainty. One of the things I love about the way Romans 12 begins is Paul writes this section about how to live. Chapters 12 through 15 are really about the Christian life, things Paul wanted that Roman church to think about relative to the Christian life. But he begins this whole section by saying, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God. How are we to live? We're to live out of the mercies of God. The book of Romans has told us a lot about the mercies of God before chapter 12. He's told us about how God is merciful to sinners, how God has justified sinners in the work of Jesus Christ, how God in mercy is sanctifying sinners, how God in mercy had elected sinners. And now he says this is why we're to live the way we're to live. This is why we're motivated to live from God and by God and for God because He's had mercy on us, because His mercies are the foundation of all of our living. And so in light of those mercies, brethren, he says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice and have your minds renewed in the will of God. This is what it means to live with certainty before the Lord. Our whole lives, our whole beings, our whole minds are to be dedicated to Him, focused on Him, relying on Him. And in that, there's no uncertainty because God will not fail us. God will be with us. God will strengthen us. And in this section, then, he offers a kind of summary at the very heart of the section about what Christian living will look like. And that's what we want to particularly focus on this morning, Romans 13, verses 11 through 14 in particular. Here's Paul's summary of Christian living in this section, and he really makes three points there, you'll be relieved to know. He makes three points there, and the three points of Christian living are know, throw, and show. So, I expect you to remember that. The three points of Christian living are know, throw, and show. What are we to know for our Christian life in this new year and in every year? Well, what we need to know is the time. The LA Times may have thought it could say something useful about the year 2022, but Paul is telling us about time in the big picture. Paul is telling us about time as God sees it and as God has planned it. Paul is telling us about how we're to understand time as it unfolds according to God's redemptive will, and he says about time here, you're still living in the nighttime. You're still living in the nighttime, but the day is coming. I don't know about you, I always hate the coming of November in Southern California because daylight saving starts, which means that it starts to get dark about five o'clock. I hate to get dark at five o'clock. Now, see, I'm not a morning person. I don't care what time the sun comes up, I never see it. So it doesn't matter how much time we save in the morning, I want the time saved in the evening. And so I think there's a particular resonance of this notion, we're living still at night. We're still waiting for the daylight. We're waiting for the daylight to come. Those are the one way of looking at the times in which we live. We're still living in the night. We're still living in the night of sin. We're still living in a fallen world. We're still living in a world where not all has been made new by Jesus Christ. And we need to recognize that. Things are not the way they're going to be. But time is on our side. We may identify with those watchmen described in Psalm 130 who are keeping watch at night and longing for the day when they'll be relieved from the watch. And that's the way we ought to be. we ought to be looking for the dawning in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what this section of Romans 13 is really about. It's looking forward to the day, the day of the glorious return of the Lord. It's coming. It's coming. And we should be eager for it because living in the night is so difficult, so distressing, so at times depressing, that things are not the way we would like them to be. But the day is coming. It's at hand. It's at hand, Paul says. And salvation is coming with it. What does Paul mean when he says that? Aren't we already saved? Aren't we already forgiven in the Lord? Aren't we already new creatures in the Lord? Well, yes, that's true, but Paul is using salvation here in the fullest sense of that term. Our salvation won't be complete until the Lord returns in glory and makes all things new. That's what we're looking forward to. That's the great day that's coming. That's what's promised. And that's when salvation will be complete. It's wonderful for us individually to have salvation now with the assurance that we belong to God, and we do have that assurance. But the salvation we long for is when all things will be revealed as belonging to God and being made right by God and being renewed by God. That's what we look forward to, and this is why it is so wonderful to know that time is on our side. I think one of the temptations American Christians are given to in our time is to think that things are going downhill, that things are getting worse and worse. And if you come to adult Sunday school, maybe you've been depressed by that reality. But the truth is, the day is coming. The truth is, that day is nearer than it's ever been before. We need to meditate on that. We need to rejoice in that. That day is nearer than it's ever been before. Paul says it's nearer than the day you first believed. For those of you who had a conversion experience, you can remember when you passed from darkness into light, what a joy that was. What a blessing that was. What a change that was. And Paul is in effect saying, don't take that as the measure of the goodness God has in store for you. A better day is coming, and that day is nearer now than when you first believed. So rejoice. And even more than rejoice, Paul says to you, well, he says to the Romans. Maybe he doesn't say it to you. You decide if he's saying it to you. He said it to the Romans. He says to them, so wake up. It struck me as strange that Paul would say to Christians, wake up. Isn't that who we are? Aren't we a woke people? Aren't we awake? Well, it's interesting. A number of places in Paul's writing, he tells Christians to wake up. Apparently, one of our problems is that we are tempted to fall back asleep. This isn't just a problem in church when the preacher is a little long-winded and a little dull. It's a moral problem for Christians. We can begin to take too much for granted. We can sort of lean back and yawn and say, well, it's nighttime. Nighttime's the time for sleeping. And Paul is saying for Christians, nighttime is the time for waking up. Now, he's not saying literally that we should stay up all night, but he is saying that in the night of sin, we need to be a people awake to the calling to life and the calling to holiness and the calling of service that God has laid upon our lives. That's what we need to know. Now, there aren't a lot of really great things about getting old, but one of them is, as a retired person, I don't have to set my alarm clock very often. Maybe that's because I don't sleep that well anymore, but also because I don't have something I have to get up early for most of the time. But Paul is saying, in effect, to us as Christians, we need to set alarm clocks to wake ourselves up if we're inclined to nod off in the service of the Lord. We need to be awake. Now, Paul sometimes can be very adamant about this when he's writing to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15 verse 34. He's very sharp with them. He writes to the Corinthians, "'Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. Wow, that's kind of sharp, isn't it? With the Romans, he's a little more gentle, telling them to wake up in the night. To the Ephesians, he wrote, therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. The theme of waking up is one that Paul likes to return to with Christians and says, we have this responsibility to know the time and be awake in the service of the Lord. And that's how we'll live for Him. That's how we'll serve Him. And those who are awake will know who they are and the time in which they live, and they will throw, they will throw off the works of darkness. If you know who you are, if you know what the Lord is doing, if you know what the Lord's timing is, you will throw off the works of darkness, the works, he says, of the flesh, the desires of the flesh. The flesh refers to the whole old life that we lived before we knew Christ. The whole life that is the life of this world, and the values of this world, and the desires of this world, and the priorities of this world. We'll throw that off because we know the time in which we live. And it's interesting, the specifics that Paul lists about the works of darkness to be thrown off. Verse 13, let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. Not in, the translation is orgies, that's maybe not the best, not in excessive feasting and drunkenness. This message may come just a few days late to America at the beginning of a new year, but it's important to stop and think, what are we living for? Now, are we tempted to make our bellies our gods? I made the mistake of getting on the scale this morning. Apparently, I have been making my belly my god, and I have to try to shrink that down in the new year. But what are we living for? What are our priorities? Are we living just to indulge ourselves? Are we living for immorality and debauchery? Maybe Paul was writing, watching television on New Year's Eve, and the appalling sort of glorification of immorality that now is praised in our society, excess of every sort. We have to throw that off. We have to recognize it for what it is. We have to recognize it as neither loving ourselves, nor loving God, nor loving the neighbor when we indulge ourselves and abuse the neighbor. That's what Paul is talking about here. And isn't it interesting, having talked about those things that we would say are sort of gross sins, excessive feasting and drunkenness, immorality and debauchery, And then he says, and quarreling and jealousy. Now, I think this is an important word to the church. It's not that Christians are never guilty of drunkenness or immorality, so we need that word. But maybe we're surprised that Paul links to that gross sin what we would think of as kind of minor sins, quarreling and jealousy. But Paul doesn't see them as minor sins. And he calls us then to care for one another. My sense, you know, you'll be shocked to learn this, but ministers don't always know everything that's going on in a congregation. People are not always completely honest and straightforward with ministers. Sometimes they pretend to be better than they actually are. I know you're shocked to hear that, but it's true. So, maybe I don't see everything that I ought to see, but one of the things that has struck me in this congregation over the years as I've been here is how relatively little quarreling and jealousy has gone on here. I've been struck by what a wonderful loving spirit by and large has pervaded this place as a congregation. And we should see what a wonderful blessing that is from the Lord. There are churches where there's just constant turmoil and tension and division and complaining and struggling and quarreling. I've talked to ministers who've served those churches. And life like that can become a habit, a very bad habit that's very hard to break. And so let us cherish the extent to which we have been spared that sin, at least, by the Lord. And continue to cultivate here this wonderful spirit of caring and loving and concern for one another. And where we are inclined to be quarrelsome or jealous, let's not do it. Let's throw it out. It's interesting, isn't it, that the law is often expressed in negative terms. Paul in Romans 13, 8 through 10 has quoted part of the law, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. Why? Because you've got to throw those things out. Those are the negative things, what you're not to do. But it's not all that he has to say. There's what we also are positively to do. But his great conclusion about throwing things out is, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. What does he mean when he says that? He says, don't plan to satisfy the flesh. Don't focus on the flesh. Don't work to satisfy the flesh. Set that all aside. Throw it out. That's the way we're to live in the new year. We're to know. We're to throw. And then we're to show. We're to show the new life that Christ has given us. We're to show that by putting on the armor of light. Isn't that a beautiful expression? Paul talks a lot about armor in Ephesians 6, doesn't he? The armor that we're to put on. Armor that is both defensive, protecting us from the attacks of the evil one, but also armor that is offensive, that we carry with us as we serve the Lord in this world. And that armor, Paul is saying here in a summary fashion, is an armor of light. You are the light of the world, Jesus said to us. And the armor that God gives us to protect us and to prepare us to serve Him is an armor of light in which we are to walk decently. It's interesting how simple Paul makes the Christian life in many ways. We're to walk decently. Paul expands on that in his letter to the Ephesians, expands on a number of these themes. Ephesians, not Ephesians, I'm sorry, 1 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 at verse 5, Paul wrote, for you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him. What a beautiful picture of how we're to live, how we're to walk decently, how we're to walk, Paul says here in Romans 13, in love, let us fulfill the law by loving one another, by caring for one another, by providing for one another. It's a beautiful picture, isn't it, of the way we're to show forth the new life in Christ. And Paul sums up that positive call in verse 14 of chapter 13, where he says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the Lordship of Christ that particularly should be shown in our lives. It's the Lordship of Christ that directs us. It's the Lordship of Christ that strengthens us in His service. Now, those of you who are well acquainted with church history, which I trust is all of you, know that these verses at the end of chapter 13 of Romans are very famous in church history because they are the verses that led to the conversion of Augustine, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the church. Augustine, as a young man of 31, was still, he felt overwhelmed and controlled by his sins. He wanted to be a Christian, but he felt he wasn't a Christian. And he was sitting in a garden with a friend, and they were talking about their struggles with immorality and their desire to be more Christ-like. And Augustine records in his confessions that he began to weep as he contemplated his sin, and he ran off from his friend to think about his sin and to pray that he might be delivered. And as he records it, he said he heard a child's voice as if in a game being played, floating over the wall of his garden, and the voice said, take and read, take and read, take and read. And Augustine said, I heard that as a commandment from God, and I ran to the book I had been reading Romans. And I picked it up, and I opened it, and my eyes fell on these words. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and in jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. And Augustine said, it was as if in that moment I passed from darkness into light. The Lord did His work of grace in me, Augustine said. And from then on, he lived for the Lord. And his life becomes an inspiration to the church through all ages because he lived for the Lord, because he had heard these words, because he had awakened from the slumber in which he had found himself. And so this morning is a good time to ask everyone here, do you need to be converted the way Augustine was converted? Is it time for you to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to make no provision for the flesh? Is this the moment when you should awake to know Christ and to live for Him? If it is, don't delay. There's no value in delaying. Augustine delayed because he said to the Lord in prayer, I want to be converted, but not yet. And what he was saying is, I want to enjoy the world yet a while, and then get right with God later. He realized how foolish that was as he looked back on it. There is nothing better than being right with the Lord. There is nothing better than living for God. And so the Spirit says, come, come. Why would you wait? For all of us, as we begin a new year, we need to be rededicated to serving the Lord, to knowing the time, to throwing off the old life, to showing the new life that we have in Christ. And may God grant us that in this year, we will have the joy of salvation in our hearts and in our lives, that we will be awakened afresh to the mercies of God and to the privilege of living for Him. And may we truly be lights in this dark world to the praise of His glory. May that be true for every one of us. Amen. Let us pray. How good you are to us, O Lord! How great is the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ! How wonderful the life to which he calls us! Grant us, O Lord, that we might all be those clothed in the armor of light, that we all might be awake to your great salvation, and grant that you will hear our prayer that Jesus Christ will come in the glory of His light soon to make all things new. Hear us and bless us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.